First bite: gizzard.

First bite: gizzard. 

Ha’s Đặc Biệt, a Vietnamese food pop-up, was serving phở out of Vinegar Hill House this weekend, and although spring showed up momentarily in NYC this past week, I was tentatively excited that winter was still making itself known today.

I sat outside and patiently awaited for my bowl of phở gà (Vietnamese chicken noodle soup). I kept one foot on a table leg, to keep it from wobbling on the stone patio, but it felt like my hunger was accelerating me towards an unknown destination. A server brought out a yellow basket of herbs: basil leaves, bean sprouts, culantro, and limes. 

Eventually, the bowl of noodles arrived. Cilantro and green onion bathed in the broth, suspended on a thin layer of chicken fat that had separated from the soup.

I took a sip, and the cold instantly vanished from within. In fact, the entire world vanished. It was just me and this bowl of phở—I had arrived. Other than the gizzard, there were chicken hearts, cartilage, white and dark meats handpicked from the bone. I slurped loudly, trying to alternate bites of offal, noodles, and soup. I missed the deep basin of an Asian soup spoon, but the metal one just made me work a little harder.

Texture is an important element of Asian cuisine, and it’s a bit more varied compared to Western cuisine. Outside of crispy and soft, there’s also springy, floppy, chewy, and all the spectrums in-between. Palates not used to these textures can find certain foods, like offal, off-putting, but I grew up eating a wide variety of textures. Texture is slurping hollow pork bones in soup, sea cucumber for my dad’s birthday since it is his favorite dish, drinking grass jelly from a can to cool off in the summer. 

Texture allows memories to stay, take hold in your mind. Some memories become blurred outlines like recalling a dream after you just awake. Some may fade altogether, texture eroding over time, their holds loosening. 

When the bowl was near empty, the world seemed to return bit by bit. I added another handful of sprouts to what was left of the broth, oil droplets exploding like a million tiny stars on the surface of some faraway sky.